How does organization help you be more adventurous? Let me start with the excuses I hear about not being organized, which generally boil down to misconceptions about what being organized does for you. By being organized, valuable resources – time, money, space – are not
wasted in ways that return no or little value to you emotionally,
physically and psychologically but are spent on activities (or
inactivity) that have a high return on investment (ROI); emotionally,
physically and psychologically.

EXCUSES:

Its takes time that I could being doing something else.

As the graph below illustrates, there is a higher short term time cost with getting organized than not. However, once organized, there is a much lower time cost with maintaining that organization than continuing to be unorganized. We have heard it said that it takes three weeks to develop a new habit. So instead of spending 20 minutes every morning looking for your keys. Spend twenty minutes tonight defining a place for your keys, that you will remember and is easy access. Then spend the next three weeks making it a habit to put your keys there. Then never think about this again. How are you going to spend that extra 20 minutes in the morning doing something that is going to add to you happiness, or mental/physical health. If you need ideas, return to this blog once a week for ideas on adding adventure to your day, right where you are.

This graph is not scientific

I’m impulsive.Impulsiveness has nothing to do with being organized or unorganized. Being organized actually allows you to be more impulsive. Being organized is not about being inflexible, its about gaining flexibility in areas of true importance for they return to you in happiness and health. One of the things I am really good at is impulsive cooking. By organizing your fridge and pantry, you can easily see what you have to work with when instead of making that pot roast you planned for dinner because you impulsively took ( or about to take ) advantage of an exciting dynamic situation that adds to your health and happiness and now you don’t have the time for the pot roast. My girlfriend is often amazed at my ability (which is a learned skill ) to look in the fridge and cabinets and whip out a delicious meal from leftovers. When you know where and can reach for that outdoor blanket without having to look for then dig through a half an hour of stuff, you can impulsively think, “Wow, what a clear night, lets go out to the park and look at stars baby.” Without thinking about all the time and effort to get the blanket out – which can be demoralizing.

It’s boring.
Really? Cause being disorganized is so exciting. Ok, sometimes the effect can be but lets have adventures that do something for us, not ones that take from us. Boredom is an industrial revolution idea, at least among the non-elite. Until leisure time came along, most people were so busy trying to keep from dying from the various ways death came at them everyday, that they had no time to be bored. The first thing you must do to fight boredom is accept that if you are bored, it’s your fault. When you own that, then if you are bored five minutes from now the only one you have to blame is yourself. By owning my boredom I then am empowered to change it. So if you are borded, how about throwing on an old shirt, pants and shoes and go do something new or explore a new place. Can’t find your beat around shoes? Ya, you know what to do, see excuse number 1.

Resources:
The areas of your life that organization can help in giving you more freedom are time, money and space. Managing time and money waste will give you more of both for adventures. De-cluttering and organizing you stuff will give you more time and money.

Organization – see orgjunkieand missminimalist.You can also, try going through all your stuff, if you haven’t used it in a year put it out for garage sale or throw it out. If you think you haven’t used it for a year because you could not find it, put it aside, if not used in six more months – get rid of it. Want to see much useless crap you really own, take individual pictures of EVERYTHING you own. When you are done piling up all your stuff Man vs. Debt has a guide to sell your crap on Ebay, Craigslist and Amazon.

2 Comments For This Post I'd Love to Hear Yours!

That tip about photographing everything you own really works! I forced myself to create a visual inventory of every single fabric and garment I had amassed to serve as fodder for my altered couture etsy shop. In addition to having to wash, dry and fold each piece, the extra step of snapping a pic was the perfect aversion therapy to my hoarding tendency. Now when I drive by a thrift store or yard sale and feel the familiar yearning to go on a hunt, I picture myself having to go through the whole darned process…and 99% of the time the urge passes.